We don't use a playbook, says Texas Tech's 33-year-old coach

Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury says his team doesn’t use a playbook of offensive diagrams, formations, schemes, tricks, gadgetry and so on, which is a bit surprising: Most teams do, in fact, use a playbook.

Nah, he’s just being literal. As Kingsbury notes in a documentary short for Grantland, he prefers to draw plays on a board and have his players copy them down in their own “playbook,” as doing so leads to increased knowledge of the play’s individual responsibilities.

Pretty interesting, right? It’s sort of like the old sit-in-the-front-of-the-class routine, only with college football, not Algebra I. The general idea, per Kingsbury, is that a deep and thorough knowledge of his Air Raid offense will allow the Red Raiders to “play without thinking.”

He’s a Mike Leach disciple, one of many in the FBS, and those who were indoctrinated into Leach’s system typically adhere to the scheme’s inherent simplicity. In general, Leach’s style uses few “plays” – maybe around 30-40 – but many different formations. So Leach (and Kingsbury, and others) can typically install an offense in short order, usually in the span of 10-12 practices (if not less). Like Kingsbury, Leach doesn’t use a playbook – and hasn’t in more than a decade.

1. Kingsbury says “Let’s go” approximately 100 times during the course of the video. Extrapolating for an entire day’s practice, multiplying that by five and then multiplying that by 18, I estimate that Kingsbury will say “Let’s go” to his offense roughly 12,000 times from spring drills through the end of the postseason.

2. Texas Tech’s practice field is in rough shape. Now, I’m not sure if that’s the Red Raiders’ normal field for shorts-and-tees practice, but it looks like the Lubbock wind and heat has been unkind to the grass.

3. It’s always cool when coaches draw plays in thick marker on the other side of a pane of glass. Anything looks cool in that setting – directions home from school, a grocery list, etc.

It’s not so much a “playbook” as various sheets of paper, likely stapled together, containing offensive plays, (…)

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